Medical insurers tie reimbursements of healthcare providers to their reporting of quality measures. Quality measures are metrics that represent the healthcare providers' adherence to clinical guidelines and indicate whether appropriate care has been given to patients. For example, a hospital treating a patient for an acute myocardial infarction (i.e., heart attack) may follow a guideline requiring the patient be given an aspirin at the time the patient is discharged. If the hospital cannot provide evidence to the patient's insurer that this quality measure was satisfied, the insurer can penalize the hospital.
Identifying and reporting quality measures is a time-consuming and expensive requirement that falls outside the primary role of healthcare providers. As a consequence, providers can be inconsistent and inaccurate in reporting quality measures. However, by effectively tracking and reporting quality measures, the healthcare providers may improve their quality of care and increase fees covered by insurers.
Transcription services support healthcare providers by transcribing information and linking predefined medical terms to the transcribed content. For example, a transcription service may encode documents with identifiers of treatments, medications and procedures described in a patient's medical reports. Thus, transcription services are in a position to support the healthcare providers' tracking and reporting of quality measures. However, transcription services often do not have access to all the information required to fully satisfy reporting requirements. For instance, the service provider may lack access to lab reports generated by third-party providers of lab analyses.